世論 What Japan Thinks

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

The answer to headline is “not very much, quite frankly. And just 17 times a year.”

The Japanese division of the drug company Bayer recently published the results of a survey into Japanese married couples’ bedroom life. They interviewed 103 men and 103 women, all currently married, from each decade of life from their thirties to their sixties, excepting men in their forties, where they only had 102 people, making 823 people in total. The fieldwork was conducted between the 9th and 12th of June this year, by means of an internet questionnaire. No information is available on how the respondents were chosen.

In the second part we look at the degree of satisfaction in marriages; total sexlessness seems to be bad for a relationship, but even those with a somewhat sexless marriage seem to be reasonably satisfied overall. As one might expect, those most active in the bedroom seem to be the happiest.

Unfortunately, in Q8 the print on the graph is far too small and I cannot read it all; if anyone can help out, please leave me a short message.
Read the rest of this entry »

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

The answer to headline is “not very much, quite frankly. And just 17 times a year.”

The Japanese division of the drug company Bayer recently published the results of a survey into Japanese married couples’ bedroom life. They interviewed 103 men and 103 women, all currently married, from each decade of life from their thirties to their sixties, excepting men in their forties, where they only had 102 people, making 823 people in total. The fieldwork was conducted between the 9th and 12th of June this year, by means of an internet questionnaire. No information is available on how the respondents were chosen.

The main reason for this research is, of course, that Bayer is famous for Viagra (oops, hope that doesn’t trip your spam filters), so it wanted to highlight issues surrounding the condition known in Japanese by the initials of the English term, ED (I’ll let you work that one out yourself!), probably because it’s less of a mouthful than the Japanese term 勃起機能の低下, bokki kinou no teika. My dictionary suggests 勃起障害, bokki shougai, is the official term, but perhaps that second term sounds too negative – “malfunction” rather than just “reduced functionality” in the first case. Note that for reasons I’m not too sure of, a lot of the terminology is English loanwords, even when Japanese equivalents exist; for example, ED as noted above, then セックス and セックスレス (sekkusu and sekkusuresu, sex and sexless, to name but three.

As per usual for any bedroom-related surveys, no, I will not tell you where I stand (as it were), but instead relate a wee anecdote. The first time my mother-in-law came to visit our flat shortly after marriage, and as wifey showed her the bedroom, complete with double bed, of course, the mother-in-law asked where I slept.

A tip of the hat to Mari’s Diary to alerting me to this survey! No, I don’t know what the penguins are for either!
Read the rest of this entry »

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

Following up on my recent report into Japanese demographics, in particular the lack of children, here is the results of a survey from the Meiji Yasuda Institute of Life and Wellness, Inc on the views of young Japanese (between the ages of 20 and 39) on marriage, birth and divorce. In February of this year they surveyed 759 people (I think it was by face-to-face interviews, but it is not clear from the survey) from the Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa areas (basically the capital city and surrounding prefectures). As the detailed demographics are important to this survey, I’ll present them within the main text.

In the final part we look at how people meet; for me, I’d definitely be in the “Other” category, as the tale of how I met my wife is perhaps not an unusual method for foreigners (no, I wasn’t her English teacher!), but the circumstances surrounding it were quite interesting. Basically, the timing was perfect for both of us, but if any one thing had happened differently we may never have lasted more than one or two dates; even an earthquake in Portland played a part…
Read the rest of this entry »

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

Following up on my recent report into Japanese demographics, in particular the lack of children, here is the results of a survey from the Meiji Yasuda Institute of Life and Wellness, Inc on the views of young Japanese (between the ages of 20 and 39) on marriage, birth and divorce. In February of this year they surveyed 759 people (I think it was by face-to-face interviews, but it is not clear from the survey) from the Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa areas (basically the capital city and surrounding prefectures). As the detailed demographics are important to this survey, I’ll present them within the main text.

This portion of the survey deals in part with middle-age divorce. This is the phenomenon whereby round about retirement, usually, marriages just break up because of many factors, including the husband now being nothing without work, or the wife no longer having peace and quiet now he’s home all day. This statistic may increase in a couple of years time as there is a change in the law coming through that will allow divorced women to get at their share of the ex-husband’s pension more easily.
Read the rest of this entry »

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

Following up on my recent report into Japanese demographics, in particular the lack of children, here is the results of a survey from the Meiji Yasuda Institute of Life and Wellness, Inc on the views of young Japanese (between the ages of 20 and 39) on marriage, birth and divorce. In February of this year they surveyed 759 people (I think it was by face-to-face interviews, but it is not clear from the survey) from the Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa areas (basically the capital city and surrounding prefectures). As the detailed demographics are important to this survey, I’ll present them within the main text.

This is quite the longest survey I’ve translated for a while, but it is a fascinating set of figures. The sample size is perhaps slightly small, but the processing of the data seems to have been very detailed, so I would place a high degree of trust on these statistics.
Read the rest of this entry »

DIMSDRIVE performed internet-based research involving 5,274 people in September of last year to find out which country’s citizens would people most want to marry. It is not stated whether or not the people interviewed were single or not.

The Asia versus the West split is quite noticeable in the men, but really striking amongst the women. I previously translated statistics regarding international marriages in Japan that shows that the ideals being expressed here do not seem to be realised.

On a slight tangent, I watched the last episode of an NHK English learning program which features an English-speaking Western blonde angel that prods a clueless office worker along the path to success at her job getting a date with her transferred from New York colleague, the ideal tall, muscular, tanned, well-coiffured white executive. The angel’s job was done because the glaikit Misaki finally pulled her man.
Read the rest of this entry »

Trivia no Izumi (Fount/Spring of Trivia) outdid itself tonight, with a survey to find out when people who had been married for three years first heard their wife pass gas! They interviewed 1000 Japanese husbands by means of an internet poll, and as you can see in the pie chart on the right, almost half the wives (43%) couldn’t keep it in for more than a year. 29% first let rip in the second year, 16% avoided a bottom burp until their third year, and 12% of husbands have been spared their wives’ anal emissions.

For good measure, this segment of the show also had face-to-face interviews with some of the husbands describing the how and where of their wives’ flatulance, accompanied by their wedding photos, leaving their neighbours in no doubt who they were talking about!

To finish up this item of trivia, they persuaded one of the wives who had never passed gas in front of her husband to try to do it, so their hidden cameras could capture this moment for posterior-ity…

Oh, and I certainly will not tell you what category my wife falls into!

I obtained some figures of international marriage in Japan, which I shall summarise here, giving the historical trends from 1985 to 2003. The exact source of this statistical data is unclear, but presumably from some government agency.

UPDATE: I found the source, an Excel sheet on the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare web site.

	1985	1990	1995	2000	2001	2002	2003
All couples	735,850	722,138	791,888	798,138	799,999	757,331	740,191
Husband and wife both Japanese	723,669	696,512	764,161	761,875	760,272	721,452	704,152
Either foreigner	12,181	25,626	27,727	36,263	39,727	35,879	36,039
Husband Japanese, wife foreign	7,738	20,026	20,787	28,326	31,972	27,957	27,881
Wife Japanese, husband foreign	4,443	5,600	6,940	7,937	7,755	7,922	8,158

Read the rest of this entry »

infoseek Research and Rakuten Research (not sure of the connection between the two companies) carried out the following survey regarding people’s views on divorce. They interviewed 1,852 married or divorced people aged from 20 to 69 in April of last year. (Actually, the survey was part of a larger one on general lifestyle issues, and this report chose to highlight the divorce aspect.) The statistic of 30% of young people marrying due to a bun in the oven is rather eye-opening.

First, people were asked the reason for resolving to get married. The top answer was “No particular reason”, at 24.2%; next was worrying about getting left on the shelf and other age-related concerns at 23.4%. 14.1% said because they’d been going out for so long, and 12.5% was for some other reason. Where the other 25.8% went is not noted, but in the “other reason” category, answers like “Because I like… partner or the concept of marriage, I don’t know – Japanese is sometimes vague!” and “I want to live together with my partner” and other forward-looking statements were in the majority. Looking at individual age groups, 30.3% of those in their twenties had their hands forced by the necessity of a shotgun wedding! Note that in Japan, children born out of wedlock is still less than 10% of the total births.

Now on to divorce: the raw figures are as follows.

Q: Have you ever thought about divorcing your current partner?

Never	63.2%
Thought about it before	31.1%
Currently thinking about it	5.7%

Looking at the figures in detail, considering those who are currently and have previously thought about divorce as one, only 29.4% of men have, whilst 43.1% of women have. Looking at those currently thinking about divorce by age group for each sex, the peaks are for early thirties men, at 10.3% and late forties women at 9.2%.

Q: For those who have thought about divorce, for how long have you thought about divorcing your current partner?

	All (N=626)	Male (N=232)	Female (N=394)
Up to six months	8.9%	3.9%	11.9%
Six months to one year	11.7%	9.5%	12.9%
One to three years	17.3%	15.9%	18.0%
Three to five years	12.3%	13.8%	11.4%
Five to eight years	10.7%	12.9%	9.4%
Eight to ten years	8.5%	11.2%	6.9%
10 to 15 years	12.9%	13.8%	12.4%
15 to 20 years	7.5%	8.6%	6.9%
20 to 25 years	5.4%	6.0%	5.1%
25 to 30 years	4.2%	3.4%	4.6%
Over 30 years	0.6%	0.9%	0.5%

The above table seems to show that women have thought about divorce for a shorter time on average than for men, but the exact reason for this is not hinted at within the article.

As can be seen from the table below, the biggest reason for thinking about divorce is a personality clash, at 45.0%, followed by problems with parents or relatives at 22.0%, and living together causing mental problems at 21.1%. Amongst those aged 40 and over, the personality clash issue is especially large.

Q: For what reasons did you think about divorce? (Multiple answer)

Personality clash	45.0%
Problem with parents or relatives	22.0%
Living together causing mental problems	21.1%
Disagreements about money sense	19.3%
Disagreements about lifestyle	19.2%
Disagreements about sex	18.2%
Wanting to be alone	14.2%
Disagreements about interests	12.9%
Problem regarding children	12.0%
It was a mistake getting married	11.8%
Loans or wasteful habits	8.9%
Partner’s personality changed	8.8%
Partner’s unfaithfulness	8.6%
Domestic violence	6.5%
Others	6.5%
Changed jobs	5.8%
Cannot go out freely	5.4%
Drinking problem	5.3%
Get away from children	3.8%
Gambling	3.5%
Religion or ideology problem	3.0%
Redundancy	3.0%
Met someone else	2.2%
Didn’t receive any spending money	2.1%
Illness	2.1%
Don’t want to return home	1.6%

Looking at why people don’t get divorced, one reason that splits the sexes is the concern of the effect on a child having just a single parent. 48.3% of men versus 38.3% of women felt this to be a concern, perhaps reflecting the usual outcome of custody issues, namely that children tend to end up with the mother (my personal opinion, not mentioned in the survey analysis). Similarly, 23.3% of men would hate to be separated from their kids versus 15,5% of women.

Q: For what reasons did you suppress your desire for divorce? (Multiple answer)

	All	Male	Female
Couldn’t survive financially	22.7%	5.6%	32.7%
Living alone is lonely	8.5%	9.1%	8.1%
Pitiful for a child to have a single parent	42.0%	48.3%	38.3%
Parents or others opposed to divorce	6.4%	6.0%	6.6%
Other people think we should be together	2.1%	2.2%	2.0%
Must keep up appearances	17.4%	20.3%	15.7%
Partner couldn’t live without me	9.4%	8.6%	9.9%
Partner couldn’t live alone	12.9%	16.8%	10.7%
Would hate to be separated from children	18.4%	23.3%	15.5%
Others	15.8%	10.8%	18.8%

Thinking about how long it will be until they are divorced, 50.2% thought within a year, and 22.3% within half a year (so 27.9% are between six to twelve months). It’s not clear if the sample size are just those currently thinking of divorce, but that may be correct.

Questioning the whole sample of 1,852 people regarding bringing up the subject of divorce, 80.5% thought women should bring it up, but only 51.9% thought men should. In addition, 69.0% thought they should bring up the topic themselves, whereas 17.8% said it was their partner, and 13.2% of the time both sides brought up the topic round about the same time. This last sentence is unclear – it might refer to in cases of those who are divorced or thinking about divorce, but the question uses the present tense.

Q: For those of you divorced, what did you do with your wedding ring?

Just kept it	27.9%
Threw it away	24.9%
Others	22.3%
Returned it to partner	15.7%
Sold it	5.1%
Gave it to someone else	2.0%
Had it remade into other jewelry	2.0%